​elder Matthew Jones

你好我的家人和朋友們Happy Chinese New Year!! It's been a really fun time to be a missionary in Taiwan, and it's been an awesome opportunity to feel the strength of all the members over here. It's been a week full of eating til I can't eat anymore and coming up with crazy spiritual shares to get the members excited and into it, and it's been a week to remember here in 東英. In addition to all of that, we've been playing basketball every morning, so that's been a really fun time. Gotta love morning basketball :) Mom, you'd be really proud of me, we put together a really cool, creative spiritual share to get the kids involved at the member lessons that we go to. We went and bought a puzzle and drew a picture of a temple with the words "the kingdom of God". We then break up the puzzle and go piece by piece, checking to see if the pieces have anything written on the back. We wrote different things on a couple different pieces talking about how you can participate in sharing the gospel, like praying for opportunities, serving others, and being brave in giving invitations. Everyone has loved the spiritual share so far, and we've been using the talk from Elder Anderson a couple years ago about missionary work as the basis. He talks about how we are all pieces in a giant puzzle, and we have a part to play in helping other pieces fit in the big picture. It's really been a good way to get the members excited about the work and realize the potential they have. We then leave them with a puzzle piece on a magnet saying, "How am I going to help others to enter the Kingdom of God". It's been really awesome, and I've loved giving it to others. This week we've been trying to find more ways to do service, cause there are not a lot of people interested in talking to us right now haha. We've done a lot of sweeping for the community, and it's always fun to see the waves and smiles we get from the people passing byWell, I'm loving my life as a missionary right now. Hope you all are having a great Chinese New Year!! :) 鍾凱旋長老Elder Jones​

你好我的家人和朋友們This past week was pretty busy for us, but it was a good one. We are finally starting to see some good progress. Even though we didn't have a ton of time this week, we still managed to find some random time to contact, which has been good. One lesson that I've learned from serving here is that I've learned to love contacting even when we get rejected every day. It's just really awesome to be out here sharing about Jesus Christ, and even if the people reject, I feel good knowing that I'm helping them come closer unto Christ. This past week we had a meeting with the Stake Presidency and Zone Conference. It's always fun to be able to work with people who have a vision. We had a fun time at Zone Conference giving a nice training on how to be more accountable. This week we tried to visit at least one member a day, and it brought some really good results. The ward is really coming together, and it's awesome seeing them come together and get excited about missionary work. This week for Chinese New Year, we have meal appointments every day for lunch and dinner, so that should be another great way to get to know the members. One of the funny things from this week is we were at a member's house eating dinner, and she had a daughter and her family who weren't members, so I started to bro down with the dad, and he invited me to watch NBA games with him and talk about the gospel. Dannnng I was so tempted haha. We'll have to find a time to share the gospel and not watch basketball lol. C is doing really well, he is sticking to his plan and is smoking less and less each day. I'm really excited that he is really progressing now and hope that we can continue to help him reach his goal. We also found a really cool investigator named Brother L. He's a high school student and used to go to church in junior high. He told us that recently he's been thinking about coming back to church, and that day he ran into us, so talk about that for being a miracle. We are looking to continue helping him come unto Christ :) Well, that's about it!! Hope you all have a great week and remember to spread the good word 鍾凱旋長老Elder Jones

你好我的家人和朋友們Well, I can't really remember what happened this last week, so I'm just gonna start typing and hope that somewhere along the way I can remember what we did haha. Last Pday we just ended up going to McDonald's and playing basketball, a classic Pday here in Taizhong. Today we are playing basketball and heading over to 一中街, which is a nice place to chill and eat some unhealthy food haha. They have a 帥到分手 shirt there, so maybe I'll cop one.This past week, our boy C made a lot of good progress. We've continued to meet with him and try to strengthen his faith, and yesterday we had a break through. We had a really powerful lesson on baptism and the gift of the holy ghost. C said that he really wants to be baptized, and loves the feeling he has when he comes to church. We were able to set a 3/10 goal with him as well as help him set a plan to quit smoking. He's super awesome, and I know he can hit the goal if he works hard. This week we had our Mission Leadership Council, which was really fun to be a part of. It's really cool to see how the mission is run, and it's awesome to be able to put in some ideas. I also got to see Elder B again, so that was awesome. We also have been working really closely with the ward to develop relationships and help them get excited about the missionary work. It's been really cool to see the whole attitude of the ward change. We've had lots of opportunities to serve and teach them, and we have member lessons set up every day this next week, which doesn't happen very much in Taiwan. It's been really cool to be a part of this process, and I'm excited to see where it goes. Right now, the whole ward is fasting and praying for missionary opportunities, so I'm excited to see what can happen.Well, that's pretty much it for this week! Hope you all have a great week! Go Eagles! 鍾凱旋長老Elder Jones

你好我的家人和朋友們！Well, you guessed it, this week was transfers and there will be some changes. Elder Y will be stepping down from Zone Leader after serving for 5 transfers and will be headed down to Tainan, the promised land haha. I'll miss Elder Y a ton, we had lots of fun playing basketball and talking about all sorts of random stuff. Even though we didn't see the success we were hoping for this transfer, looking back on it, I'd still say it was a definite success. My new companion will be Elder C. He is from Hawaii and came on island at the same time as me. It will be his first transfer as a zone leader, so I'll have to try to help him understand what we have to do. Pray for me that everything will go smoothly please haha. Another little bit of exciting news is Elder Y, my trainee, is moving into our zone, and I'll get to go on exchanges with him this transfer. This past week was also pretty rough in terms of finding investigators. I have no idea what it is, but we just can't seem to find anyone. This week, we decided we needed to switch things up, and put a much bigger emphasis on visiting less active members and trying to reestablish a relationship with them. We were able to find 3 less active members that are now our "less active investigators" meaning we will help them build back their faith and hopefully get them back to church. It was a good time, and we felt really good about what we were doing. Unfortunately, none of them came to church this week, but there's always next week! Last Pday we went to Sun Moon Lake, which was one of the coolest places I've been on my mission. The drive up there was super pretty, and it was awesome to be up in the mountains breathing fresher air than we normally do haha. It was really pretty, hopefully the pics will help you get a little taste of what it was like!This week I read a really good talk by Elder Rasband from last conference about the Divine design of our lives and how God's hand is in everything. Every time one of my companions leaves and a new one comes, it's always hard to say goodbye, but one of the biggest testimony builders on my mission has been that God has always looked after me and helped me through my companions and wards. I know this is His work and He won't leave me hanging.Hope you all have a great week! Love you! 鍾凱旋長老Elder Jones ​

你好我的家人和朋友們​Last week we had the opportunity to return to the famous Taiping Bat Caves, the place we went on my first P-day in Taiwan. It was really fun to bike back up there and re-experience something that seems so long ago in some ways but also so recent. We had a fun time mucking our way through some bat poop, and then found this pretty cool river/waterfall area. It was super pretty that day, and the pollution wasn't too bad so we got really lucky.

This week was another rough week for me haha. It's been really hard to find people here, and this marks the third week in a row with no new investigators. It's all good though, we've found a bunch of people for other areas. It seems like everyone we talk to doesn't live in our area, but it's all good. I'm sure it's God trying to teach me something, so I'll do my best to figure out what it is. In terms of some good news, our investigator C is slowly taking steps to overcome his problem with the Word of Wisdom. We are worried that he won't have enough faith in himself or the Atonement to overcome it, so please keep him in your prayers. Also, our ward is really starting to improve. The quality of sacrament meeting is going up, and our members are really willing to help us in our efforts to visit LA's and such. We are working on trying to improve the home teaching in this ward, cause in Taiwan home teaching is not done very often, so hopefully we can help out with that.

In other news, We went on exchanges with Taiping this week. I went with Elder M, who is a newer missionary. He has a lot of fire and some really great ideas, and he's a great missionary. I think he's gonna contribute a lot to this mission, so I'm excited for him.

My back is doing a lot better, basketball in the mornings is still really fun, and everything else is ok so I'm doing alright haha. I know that even though a mission is hard sometimes, it's still the best thing ever and there is nothing that I'd rather be doing. I know that Jesus Christ is my Savior, and is willing to help anyone who will come unto Him. I know the Book of Mormon is the word of God, and our personal guide to help us get through the traps and temptations of the adversary. I'm so grateful for this gospel and the growth that it's helped me to make. Hope you all have a great week this next week! ​​鍾凱旋長老Elder Jones

你好我的家人和朋友們This week went by pretty fast. I'll get the bad news out of the way first: last week I hurt my back, so I can't play basketball for a little bit which sucks. Also, we now only have 1 investigator as finding has been tough lately and when we do find someone, they don't live in our area haha. There's my little bit of complaining for the week, sorry about that, on to better stuff. This week we had Zone Conference, which is always a good way to get motivated and feel the spirit. I had to conduct, which was pretty fun. We talked a lot about how we can connect all aspects of the work, rather than viewing finding, working with members, and service as separate things done at separate times. We also had to give an hour long training, which actually ended up going pretty well. We prepared way too much stuff, but it was still good haha. This week, we had exchanges with the Wufeng Elders, and I got to go with Elder E. I felt weird leading the exchange cause he's older than me on the mission, but it went pretty well. We visited a member and ate dinner with him, had our ward correlation meeting, did some knocking, and had a skype follow up with an investigator, so it was a pretty fun exchange. Our investigator C is doing pretty well. He has a great desire to change his life, and right now we are trying to help him understand the power of faith and repentance. Speaking of repentance, I read a really good talk about repentance while reviewing the talks from last conference. It's called, "Repentance is Always Positive," by Stephen W. Owen. I love how he talks about the effect of repentance always being good, no matter how hard or long or difficult the process may be. The part about the mission president talking to the missionary about the importance of daily reading and praying. It helped me realize that while it's great to be doing these things on a mission, it's equally important to keep doing it when I get home. Well, that's pretty much it for this week! Hope you all have a great week!! :)鍾凱旋長老Elder Jones

Well, the first week of 2018 is in the books, and it was a pretty good one! It's been really fun being a Zone Leader and having the chance to try to help out the other missionaries in our zone. I've really enjoyed the extra opportunities that we have to serve and help others, it's definitely helped me to feel closer to Christ recently. This week, we went on exchanges with the Dali Elders, and I got to go with Elder S. He's from Taiwan and just barely starting his mission, so it was fun to go with him and help him learn more about how to do missionary work.

Another thing that's cool about being a Zone Leader is we get to attend the Stake council meeting. It's held once a month with the members of the stake presidency and stake quorum presidencies present. It was really awesome to go to that meeting and see how much the stake wants to implement some ideas to improve missionary work. My whole mission I've gone to meetings where it seems like the missionaries are just talking and people aren't really grasping the vision, so it was really awesome to be a part of this meeting and see that the church in Taiwan is in good hands.

This week, we saw a lot of progress out of C and Brother L. C has started learning about the commandments and has been really willing to keep them. He's been reading and praying a lot and he's really looking good for his goal on 1/27. The ward did a great job of trying to get to know him on Sunday which was great. Brother L has transformed from someone coming to church cause his girlfriend invited him to someone who really wants to learn about Christ. This week we found out he lives in a neighboring ward, so we had a nice pass off lesson with them and he's lookin good to continue to progress over there. We are kinda lacking on investigators right now, but we really love the ones we have and do everything we can to help them. Having smartphones has been really nice for that. We text C every night, meet with him face to face at least once a week, and skype him once or twice throughout the week to follow up/read with him. We also have members supporting him and it's been going really smoothly.

Lately, we've been trying to implement a lot of smarter finding techniques. Rather than just contacting in the streets with no purpose, we have been contacting to members houses and visiting them/dropping off little gifts. It's really helped us get to know the ward better and build better relationships with them. We've also seen cool miracles by just talking to everyone on the way. When I first moved here, I thought the ward was a little weak, but as we've started meeting people, we've realized there are actually a lot of strong members here. It's been really cool to see.

Lastly, I wanna finish up by sharing a video that I really loved watching this week. It's on lds.org and it's called "Think to Thank". I'll post the URL below. I really love the message it conveys. We never really know how much of an influence we can have on other people by expressing gratitude for them, and we also never know when it's gonna be too late. This video really helped me realize the importance of expressing love and appreciation for those around us. I also read a great talk called "The Divine Gift of Gratitude," by President Thomas S. Monson, who I will miss dearly. He has some really good quotes about gratitude. He says, "Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it." He then goes on to say, "My brothers and sisters, to express gratitude is gracious and honorable, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live with gratitude ever in our hearts is to touch heaven." I'm grateful for the prophets words, and for a gospel that teaches us to be grateful in all things. This week, the hymn, "We thank thee O God for a Prophet," continues to play in my head. What a blessing it is to have living prophets on the earth today.

This week was a nice week here in Taizhong. It's been super fun being in such an urban area, cause I've never had anything like this before. It's crazy to see giant buildings and a bajillion people everywhere haha. It's been super fun.

This past week, our investigators saw some progress which was really cool. We have an investigator named C with a goal for the 27th, and he's looking really good. He came to church on Sunday, and we'll meet with him on Thursday. Sister L came to a ward activity this week, and is also slowly making progress. We have a Brother L that is also slowly coming along, so we are slowly seeing some things come about. Hopefully we can keep it going! We don't have a ton of investigators right now, so we are working to find some more. We are also trying to work with the ward and strengthen the relationship between the members and the ward. It's been cool to see people opening up to us.

This week we had a lot of exchanges, one with the AP's and one with some members of our zone. It was really fun to work with other missionaries and see how they did the work. I went with Elder N and Elder I, who are both really chill and love basketball, so we had a good time haha.

This week our stake had a dinner/fireside activity for the members and RC's in our stake. I got to see a lot of members from Fengyuan, so that was a good time.

Sorry I'm running out of things to right about today haha. Hope you all have a great New Years!! Weird that 2018 is already here. Keep lighting the world this year!! :) Love you all!

Merry Christmas everyone!! What a happy time of the year, and a great time to be a missionary. I'll keep this one brief so everyone can get back to enjoying their Christmas. Skyping the family was so great. Seeing everyone's faces again and talking to them was incredible. Mark's voice has changed so much! Nate looks so grown up. And the best part was it didn't even make me trunky hehe. Back to missionary things. I arrived in Taizhong safely, and I've been loving every second of the time I've spent here. Being a Zone Leader has been a really great experience. I was a little nervous coming up here cause I didn't really know anyone in this zone, but it's been really cool to see how fast I've come to love everyone up here. It's a really cool feeling. My companion is great too, his name is Elder Yang 楊長老. He's from New Tapei City and has been on his mission about a year and 8 months, so he'll be going home at the end of April. I'm super excited to work hard this next transfer with him.

This past week, we were really busy with a bunch of random activities. We had a couple Christmas carolling activities, lessons with investigators, and a bunch of random other things. We got to do a couple cool services this past week. On Wednesday, we went to an orphanage and helped them clean windows. It was so cool to see how happy the children were to see us, and how appreciative the people working there were. That night, we went to a local cram school and I dressed up as Santa Claus hahaha the little kids were so excited to see a white santa claus, I'm sure it made their whole life. Luckily for me the Taiwanese people don't know that Santa isn't supposed to be a skinny tall white guy hehe.

Other than that, it's been a great week adjusting to life here in Taizhong. It's been cold, but ti's been fun. We have some solid investigators that I have big hopes for, and it's looking promising here in the Dongying ward! I'll close this email with a quote from President Teh. He said this when talking about Christmas, "The Father gave the gift of His Son. The Son gave the gift of His Life. We can and ought to give a gift of ourselves." I really love that. No matter where you are, who you are with, or what you are doing, you can give the gift of yourself. That's all Christ really wants in the end. Hope you all find ways to give the gift of yourself today, tomorrow, and every day after.

This last week in Pingdong was a great one. We were super busy all week, and I don't really know where the time went, but it was fun. As you can probably tell by the title of this email, Elder Y finished his training, and it's now time for us to part ways. Leaving a companion always sucks, especially when they have become one of your best friends. Elder Y is a homie and a stud of a missionary, and I was super lucky to be able to train him. He'll be staying here, and I'll be moving back up to Taizhong to be a Zone Leader with Elder Y, a native Elder who has been here a little bit longer than I have. He has great English and loves basketball, so I'm sure we'll have a great time. I get to take a nice long train up there today, so that will be great lol. Kinda excited to return to Taizhong and see what it's like, but also nervous to be a Zone Leader. Keep me in your prayers!!

This past week, we saw a lot of cool miracles, including 2 of our investigators accepting baptismal dates!! Brother L and Brother C were both willing to commit to dates, and are looking really good to hit them, which means Pingdong should be baptizing this month, next month, and the month after that. Super excited with how the work is going now, because it's been a really rough transfer in terms of the work, so it's nice to see things turning around and things looking up for the area.

We also went on lots of exchanges this past week. I went on one with Elder H, who is a little younger than me and a stud of a missionary. We had a good time teaching a few lessons and setting a bap goal for Brother L. I also got to go on Elder H's last exchange with him. I've known Elder H since I first got here, and it's weird to see him going home now. It kinda made me realize that the mission actually does come to an end, so that was weird. We also had our Christmas devotional, which was held in Gaoxiong. I had to translate for the Taiwanese missionaries for part of the devotional, which is fun but makes my brain hurt haha.

Well, that's pretty much it. I've had such a great time in Pingdong, and I've learned so much. I remember before I came here I was really nervous, but I trusted in the Lord and just like he has before, he took care of me. God always knows what we need, and I trust that he has something in store for me in Taizhong, although I will admit, I'm a little nervous haha. On a side note, I turn 20 this Thursday. How weird is that? I'm finally not a teenager anymore! :) I just want to say that this has been one of the best years of my life. It's been really hard, really frustrating at times, and sometimes even painful, but it's been the best cause I've been serving the Lord 24/7. I have grown so much closer to Him and learned so much more about myself in the process. The mission is the best thing that I could've done at this age, and I'm so thankful for it. I can't wait to keep it going up in Taizhong!

Love you all so much!! Hope you all have a great week and stay safe! :)